[jandrese]

It strikes me as plausible. If the devs thought that Microsoft was going to keep their year based naming system then it wouldn't be a problem for another 100 years, by which point they would be long dead and it would be someone else's problem. The fact that there were two versions to check also meant that the shortcut of only checking the first digit is understandable. Also, if the version strings included extra cruft, like Windows 98SE2 then stopping the check early makes sense over trying for explicit string matches.

Of course Windows 10 was supposed to be the last version ever in Apple OSX style, but now we have beta for Windows 11. The lesson is: never trust what Microsoft tells you about their intentions.

[jobigoud]

You had to check for Windows ME as well so couldn't limit to the first digit.